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Companies are better served by having a few really good people on a project vs. a large number of ineffective ones. This begs a couple of questions:Do you potential clients believe that it is better to pay for quality than quantity?Who is your competition, and are you better than they are?

The Competition

Let's start with the second question: when you are an independent consultant, who is your competition? As a rule, it is not other independent consultants. According to this bureau of labor statistics report, only about 4% of programmers are self-employed. According to this one, only about 6% of systems analysts are self-employed while, this report indicates that only about 2% of "Computer Software Engineers" are self-employed.

There is a lot of overlap between each of these groups, but the bulk of the "tech lead" work will fall into the systems analyst and software engineer groups. That is what I'm mainly seeking, and I assume that you are as well if you'…

Detroit. A city filled with good restaurants, violent crime, and felonious politicians. The city I grew up in and that I still live near.

This is not a blog about Detroit.

It's a blog about something far, far more important. Me.

More specifically, it's about my journey from employee to independent. It's about returning to my roots as an über-nerd software developer. It's also about Java's place in the world, and the independent consulting market in Detroit and Ann Arbor. I don't think I'll run out of topics any time soon.

I resigned my job as Program Manager in a struggling software company last week. There were a lot of reasons behind that, but the most important one was that I couldn't stand my job.

I didn't hate the people. I didn't hate my boss. I hated the actual work I was doing from day to day.

I'm getting ahead of myself, though. Before I tell you where I'm going to, let me tell you a little bit about where I'm coming fr…